{"id":3113,"date":"2026-10-27T09:48:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T04:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.smsgatewaycenter.com\/blog\/?post_type=docs&#038;p=3113"},"modified":"2026-10-27T09:48:00","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T04:18:00","password":"","slug":"why-was-my-message-charged-as-more-than-one-sms","status":"publish","type":"docs","link":"https:\/\/www.smsgatewaycenter.com\/blog\/kb\/why-was-my-message-charged-as-more-than-one-sms\/","title":{"rendered":"Why was my message charged as more than one SMS?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Because it was longer than one SMS can hold and was split into parts. Each part is charged, even though the recipient sees a single joined-up message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The split costs a few characters per part for the information phones need to rejoin them, which is why the parts after the first are slightly shorter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">GSM7 messages (plain English text)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure><div class=\"table-responsive\"><table class=\"table table-striped table-bordered table-hover\"><thead><tr><th>Total characters<\/th><th>Parts charged<\/th><\/tr><\/thead><tbody><tr><td>1 \u2013 160<\/td><td>1<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>161 \u2013 306<\/td><td>2<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>307 \u2013 459<\/td><td>3<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>460 \u2013 612<\/td><td>4<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The first part holds 160 characters; each part after that holds 153.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Unicode messages (Hindi, other scripts, emoji)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure><div class=\"table-responsive\"><table class=\"table table-striped table-bordered table-hover\"><thead><tr><th>Total characters<\/th><th>Parts charged<\/th><\/tr><\/thead><tbody><tr><td>1 \u2013 70<\/td><td>1<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>71 \u2013 134<\/td><td>2<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>135 \u2013 201<\/td><td>3<\/td><\/tr><tr><td>202 \u2013 268<\/td><td>4<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The first part holds 70 characters; each part after that holds 67.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How to keep the count down<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Run the message through <strong>Extra > SMS Length Calculator<\/strong> and read the <strong>Cost<\/strong> and <strong>Max Cost Length<\/strong> values. Max Cost Length is how far you can go before the next part is charged.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Trim to just under a boundary. Cutting a 165-character message to 160 halves its cost.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Remove one emoji or curly quote and a message may drop from Unicode back to GSM7, raising the limit from 70 to 160.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Shorten links and drop unnecessary line breaks, each of which costs two characters.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Because it was longer than one SMS can hold and was split into parts. Each part is charged, even though the recipient sees a single joined-up message. The split costs a few characters per part for the information phones need to rejoin them, which is why the parts after the first are slightly shorter. GSM7 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":118,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"doc_category":[2363],"doc_tag":[],"class_list":["post-3113","docs","type-docs","status-publish","hentry","doc_category-message-length-encoding"],"year_month":"2026-10","word_count":177,"total_views":"28","reactions":{"happy":"0","normal":"0","sad":"0"},"author_info":{"name":"admin","author_nicename":"admin","author_url":"https:\/\/www.smsgatewaycenter.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"},"doc_category_info":[{"term_name":"Message Length &amp; Encoding","term_url":"https:\/\/www.smsgatewaycenter.com\/blog\/kb-cat\/message-length-encoding\/"}],"doc_tag_info":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smsgatewaycenter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/docs\/3113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smsgatewaycenter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/docs"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smsgatewaycenter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/docs"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smsgatewaycenter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/118"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smsgatewaycenter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.smsgatewaycenter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/docs\/3113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smsgatewaycenter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"doc_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smsgatewaycenter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/doc_category?post=3113"},{"taxonomy":"doc_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smsgatewaycenter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/doc_tag?post=3113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}